Friday December 28th, 2018
8:00 P.M – In His Presence will not meet this week.
8:00 P.M. – No DIVAS and CHAMPIONS until January
Saturday, December 29th, 2018
No events scheduled
Podcast of our Christmas Eve Broadcast – December 24, 2018
The Christmas Scarf – Part 4
For the Christmas Scarf Parts 1-3 click below
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Molly woke early the next morning, Saturday morning, to the sound of ploughs and sand trucks. The road crews were clearing the streets and Molly was clearing her head. She needed to go out again. She need more yarn, different colored yarn to finish the project Rebecca had started. Amazingly, serendipitously, maybe even miraculously the blue yarn picked by Gracia matched perfectly what Rebecca had started. Now all she needed was the red, the gold, the silver and the purple. The semi -charged cell phone in hand she went off to the same store as yesterday hoping to run into Gracia, my friends call me Grace, again. She didn’t know that it would be sooner than she could have anticipated.
As she made the turn out of her complex she was greeted with a sight that had become so familiar she had no longer noticed it. For some reason today was different. Right in front of her were the huge Red letters L O V E outside the Hilton Hotel. The word reminded her of Rebecca’s last words to her in the unsent text on her damaged red phone. It gave her the chills. Two spine tingling events in two days. This was a bit much for her.
As she began her drive she was again slowed by the traffic even though it was early. Having stopped at a red light she looked to her right and was surprised, no, shocked to see Gracia -my friends call me Grace – standing at the bus stop in a bright gold coat and hat. Molly pulled over, rolled down her window and shouted across through the passenger’s side window, “Jump in, I’m going your way.” Gracia, once she recognized Molly, complied, quickly jumping in the passenger side. Off Molly went to Hobby Lobby with Gracia – or was it Grace – in tow.
The two strangers had an expected moment of awkwardness before Gracia broke the ice. “Fancy meeting you here this morning” she said with a smile. “Do you have time for a quick stop before going to Hobby Lobby?” Molly was suddenly all in with her new friend Grace. “Point the way” she heard herself say almost enthusiastically. “Over there” said Grace pointing to one of the toughest housing projects in the city seen just to their right down a main drag.
As she turned at the next intersection, Molly could not resist asking Grace, where they were going. Grace replied with a smirk, “Well of course, I mentor a young girl there and I need to drop off her Christmas gift,” Molly now had a few more questions to ask Grace like “How old are you?” and “Why are you, a seventy five year oldish woman going to the projects alone to mentor someone?” and “How long have you been doing this?” Regretfully, that would all have to wait because they were pulling into the projects and Grace was already about to jump out of the car and find her beloved mentee. “You can stay in the car or follow me” she said back into the car after jumping out as it barely had come to a halt. “This will only be a minute, I can’t be late for work” she added.
A little overwhelmed already, Molly chose to sit this one out. “Maybe next time” were the words she whispered to herself. She was a bit apprehensive. She had never actually been here before. Safe in her parked car, she saw Grace approach a skinny dark-skinned girl who looked about 12 years of age and hand her a wrapped box. They exchanged what seemed to be pleasantries, hugged and just like that Grace was back in the car and they were on their way to Grace’s employment and Molly’s shopping destination.
After a second pause of awkward silence Molly asked Grace “So, how long have you been a mentor?” “Since my church made me aware of the opportunity” she replied. “These young girls need a steady influence in their lives. They need a good foundation. I’m trying to make a difference in one life at a time, but truth be told I do it as much for me as for them.” “How’s that?” Molly managed to choke out afraid of the answer she might hear. Grace’s demeanor changed as she said in a quiet tone, “After I lost my granddaughter Jenny three years ago I was a basket case. I was helping her mother raise her and then….” Her voice trailed off. “I got so depressed I moved away, I just wanted to be alone.” Molly thought she needed to pull the car over because she couldn’t see the road for the tears in her own eyes. Grace continued, “But last year near Christmas I stopped moping and started hoping again and that’s when this opportunity came.” “Maybe I don’t have Jenny to laugh and cry with or to mentor, but with the good Lord’s help I can use my time to help others. You understand, right? I had to make my peace with it and with God, You understand, right?” she repeated.
Molly was so glad they had reached the store by then and that she didn’t have to answer. She and Grace got out of the car and with a quick “thank you” and “your welcome” headed for their prospective stations, Grace to clock in and Molly to buy yarn. Taking out the battered red cell phone with the picture, Molly tried discreetly to match the colors and then went to check out. Grace’s words “Made my peace with God” seem to hang overhead like a cloud of smoke. How does one ever do that?” she thought, “How did Grace do that?” In yet another twist of fate her cashier was Grace. Grace could see Molly wasn’t right. Right there in line Molly found herself agreeing to meet Grace for dinner on none other than Christmas Day since neither of them had any other place to be. As quickly as she could, Molly was out the door to head to the safety of her apartment and to her project and to feeling close to Rebecca again. It might take awhile though, it was starting to snow.
Please share – 2018 Christmas Eve at Calvary Chapel – “The Gifts of Christmas – Part 4 – Peace”
This week’s service and sermon -December 23rd, 2018 – “The Gifts of Christmas – Part 3 – Love”
The Christmas Scarf – Part 3
The Christmas Scarf – part 1
The Christmas Scarf – part 2
The ride home was quicker than Molly had expected. The snow storm had turned into snow flurries and the traffic had eased a bit. She was still a bit taken back by the “coincidences” in her shopping bag but was now chalking them up to indeed just that, or maybe just the miracles of the season whatever that meant. Either way she was ready to settle into a quiet weekend alone in her apartment working on the project to connect with Rebecca, whatever it was supposed to be.
Arriving at her front door she was greeted by a small brown box. “Strange” she thought. She didn’t remember ordering anything and she wasn’t expecting anything from anyone.. Picking up the box as she opened the door she was struck by how light it was, as if it contained nothing at all. Closing her door she placed the package on the kitchen table, set down her shopping bag and hung up her coat. Attentively she began to examine the package like she was from CSI. It was clearly addressed to her and had a strange return address. It read “Properties Division, NJST, Ocean County, New Jersey”. The more she looked at the little brown package the more it baffled her. Who? What? Where? When? These all ran together in her mind like one long run-on sentence.
The small package opened so easily it surprised Molly. Fully opened, its contents stared up at her. Wrapped in notebook paper was a metal object which when picked up was revealed to be a badly beaten up red cell phone. Molly was stunned, because even in its trashed state, she recognized it immediately to be Rebecca’s cell phone. The phone had been missing since ……. the accident. Molly gripped it oh so tight, first fighting back and then, giving in to the tears.
The questions – who, what, where, and when were answered for her in a simple note written on the paper that the red phone was wrapped in. It read, “Recently, this phone was turned in to our division. It was found near the accident site that took your daughter’s life. I remembered you from your visit with us to pick up your daughter’s belongings. I did a little research using serial numbers and connected this phone to your daughter’s case. I thought you might like to have it. With deepest sympathy; Officer Jill Johnson; Properties Division; New Jersey State Troopers.”
Molly wasn’t surprised when she pressed the power button and the phone didn’t light up. She expected that. What surprised her was when she plugged it into a charger for a few moments and hit the power button, it did light up. In just few seconds, with no password needed, Molly was staring at a screen filled with Rebecca’s android apps.
Molly was unsure what to do next. She felt like she was invading Rebecca’s privacy but she wasn’t really because Rebecca was….not here anymore. She wanted so badly to connect with her daughter. Was this coincidence at the time of her deepest grief orchestrated by someone to help her do just that?
She began with the text message app. Touching the keyboard on the screen where Rebecca’s fingers had typed made her feel close to her beloved child. Scrolling through the texts, she found herself grinning through her tears. The conversations with friends were so sweet, so funny and so Rebecca. For a moment it was as if she wasn’t gone at all.
One string of texts with a guy friend of hers whose name Molly recognized had a strange picture attached. It was a selfie of someone wearing a scarf. Wait. That someone was Rebecca in the selfie and that scarf was green and blue and red and gold and silver and purple with white separating the colors. The project Molly had found in the closet looked amazingly like the beginnings of this scarf. The words in the last text on the string right after the picture brought everything together. It read “Love the scarf I made, making a second for mom for Christmas, we’ll be twins and BFFs.” Pulling herself out of the phone for a second, Molly sighed with relief. At least she knew now what she was supposed to be knitting. It was a scarf, a Christmas scarf at that.
Looking back at the red phone, Molly pulled up her name in the log of texts to review her and her daughter’s conversations. As painful as this was, it was a gift to her, grace if you will, to make it through the season. Touching her name Molly saw an unfamiliar text. She had viewed and reviewed over and over the messages her and her daughter had exchanged in the last summer days before the accident. She didn’t remember this one. Rebecca hadn’t had a chance to send it. It read “Thanks mom for raising me to be who I am, loving me with all my craziness and always being my best friend. God sure gave me the best mom a girl could ask for. I love u.” Clutching the red battered phone, Molly ran to her bedroom and cried her battered heart to sleep.
Includes Christmas Eve. Please re-post. This weekend at Calvary Chapel – Friday, December 21st – Monday, December 24th, 2018.
December 21st, 2018
8:00 P.M – In His Presence – All Church Prayer Meeting
8:00 P.M. – No DIVAS and CHAMPIONS until January
There will be no “In His Presence” on next Friday, December 28th, 2018
Saturday, December 22nd, 2018
No events scheduled
Sunday, December 23rd, 2018
9:00 A.M. – Worship Celebration
– Message from Pastor Dave Watson – “The Gifts of Christmas Part 3 – “Love” – A Commitment to Embrace
10:15 A.M. – Angie’s Connection Café
Life Groups
Youth Life – Teens
THRIVE – Young Adults
BLAST – Adults
11:15 A.M. –Worship Celebration
– Message from Pastor Dave Watson –“The Gifts of Christmas Part 3 – “Love”- A Commitment to Embrace
1:00 P.M. – Iglesia El Calvario – Spanish Life Group in the Cafe
Monday, December 24th, 2018
7:00 P.M. – 8:15 P.M. – Calvary’s Annual Christmas Eve Candlelight Service – The Gifts of Christmas – Part 4 – “Peace”- A Reconciliation to Enjoy
11:00 P.M. – The Christmas Eve Service is broadcast on WMCA 570 The Mission
Our 11:15 A.M. Worship Service is streamed live at http://www.calvarychapelsi.org and facebook at @calvarychapelsi and is also carried live on 570AM The Mission and at http://www.wmca.com and http://www.iheartradio.com, beginning at 11:30 A.M.
Podcast of our last two weeks broadcast of “God in our City”- The Gifts of Christmas – Part 1 – Faith and Part 2 – Grace
Joel 2:13 – From Spurgeon ‘ s Morning and Evening
And rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
“Heart-rending is divinely worked and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief that is personally experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart of each believer . It is not a matter to be merely talked about and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating and completely sin-purging, but it is also sweet preparation for the gracious consolations that proud, unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone. The text commands us to rend our hearts, but they are naturally as hard as marble: How, then, can this be done? We must take them to Calvary: A dying Savior’s voice rent the rocks once, and it is as powerful now. O blessed Spirit , let us hear the death- cries of Jesus, and our hearts shall be rent even as men tear their garments in the day of lamentation.”
The Christmas Scarf – Part 2
For the Christmas Scarf – Part 1 click below
The traffic was crazy. But what would you expect for black Friday? The lightly falling snow wasn’t helping the matter. Molly had tried to stay off the roads, but she needed something and she needed it now. It had been two weeks since she had discovered the knitting needles and the yarn in Rebecca’s closet. She had followed her daughter’s green pattern until she ran out of green yarn and then used up whatever white yarn there was to extend things, but now she could not go any farther because she was simply out of yarn.
Molly had made it through Thanksgiving Day — but just barely. Last year, 4 months after Rebecca’s death, she had gone over some friend’s home for Thanksgiving dinner and did her best to muddle through. It didn’t work. She vowed right then and there that she would never again sit around a table with all eyes looking at her in pity. This year she did the brave thing. She stayed in bed all day. She changed her cell phone message to “Sorry I missed your call. I won’t be available for a few days” and her auto reply on her text to “I’m out of the area, let’s connect when I get back”. The extent of her Thanksgiving celebration was watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the zillionth time — and it felt like it.
This holiday season had again opened the wound that was her heart. With no one around she felt the hole from the loss of Rebecca more sharply than she expected. The death of her parents and break-up of her marriage also had been amplified in the emptiness of her days. Now she was desperate to return to the knitting project, whatever it was supposed to be, to reconnect with her daughter just like she had a few days earlier. If she just hadn’t run out of yarn. Now she had to go out on Black Friday, the worst day in this the worst time, of the year.
She sighed with relief when she found a parking space close to the door of the Hobby Lobby store. She’d driven for 45 minutes to travel the 5 miles that the store was from her apartment. She knew they would have the yarn she needed in abundance. She quickly made her way into the store and was greeted by an elderly store employee asking if she needed help. Polite and gracious through Molly’s hurried pace, the woman whose name tag read “Gracia” and whose accent revealed her Latino heritage, was clearly pushing 75. Molly wondered what this woman was doing working on Black Friday and much less what she was doing working at all. She personally escorted Molly to the yarn section upon finding out what she was looking for.
Molly stood in the middle of the aisle viewing the multitude of choices and nearly broke into tears. It hadn’t fully occurred to her until this moment that since she didn’t really know what she was knitting, she really didn’t know what she needed. Clearly she wasn’t working with the clearest of heads. Gracia had been observing her from a short distance away and now spoke to her as she came to the end of her aisle. “Can I help you further” she said in a soft tone. Not wanting to explain, Molly heard herself reply, “I’m just trying to make something for Christmas, and I am not sure what colors to use.” Gracia was now right next to her and reaching up she picked out a green, a white and a dark blue spool of yarn. “These always seem Christmassy to me” she said. Taking them and pivoting away in a hurry, without thinking, Molly said, “Thank you Gracia.” . “My friends call me Grace” Gracia shouted after the scurrying Molly. “Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas.” she continued.
Because of the Black Friday cashier lines, Molly’s pace was forced to slow. Standing with the other shoppers waiting to make her purchase she looked around at the other merchandise. She allowed herself a few moments of gazing at what the store offered. “Lots and lots of craft stuff” she thought. “Got to come back here when there are less people”. Standing halfway down the isle because of the crowd, her eyes caught a colorful framed word art poster. In dark blue letters on a bright white background she saw the word GRACE spelled vertically on the canvas. Next to each letter was a word going across horizontally. Forming an acrostic it read “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” And then in green letters in a block near the bottom it read “That is what Christmas is all about.”
As she worked her way to the cashier she kept glancing back at the poster. She’d never heard it put that way before. It kind of made sense and gave some real meaning to what had become for her an empty holiday. Just then, Gracia appeared again having been sent to direct people to the fastest lines. Molly shouted over to her “Gracia, I mean Grace, could you help me?” When Gracia got close enough for no one else to hear, she whispered to her while pointing to the poster that had caught her eye. “Please get that GRACE poster for me so I don’t have to get out of line.” Gracia quickly got it for her and as quickly as she came she was gone helping someone else. “I hope I’m that spry at that age” thought Molly.
Inside her car Molly prepared to make her way home. She was satisfied with her purchases and examined them. She paused as she considered the coincidence coming out of her shopping bag. The Grace Poster in dark blue, white and green, the balls of yarn in dark blue, white and green all secured by Gracia or as her friends called her, Grace. As she looked at these items Molly felt a slight chill up her spine… and it wasn’t because it was still snowing.
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